Divisions Of The Heart
by LastSaskatchewanSpacePirate
Summary: And into six his heart is neatly divided, into Caroline, and Lilly, and Rebecca, and Emily, and Catherine and Molly and each burns and bleeds and hurts so greatly that he wishes sometimes that he had no heart at all.


**_A/n: _A bit of a companion piece to 'What You Don't Know About Greg Lestrade'. Can be read on it's own, of course. Six girls Greg Lestrade loved and lost. Reviews are love! **

**Caroline**  
When he thinks of her he will think of yellow flowers and long fields of grass. He will remember the smell of fresh dirt and the delight of climbing to the very top of tall trees. There are memories of yanking playfully at her dark braids, of chasing each other up and down the street as their parents watch from the porch. He will remember childhood, and innocence, and happiness. These are days that he can no longer reach, but will never forget.

But neither will he forget the pain of kissing her on the cheek goodbye and knowing it is the last time. Sussex is a big, scary faceless word at age eight, a Place-That-Caroline's-Is-Moving-To, and he knows only that it is taking her away from him. He will remember watching her dash off to the car with dark plaits flying out behind her, and he will remember catching her eye, just for a moment, as she turns to look back one last time. This is the last time he will see her. He no longer remembers the colour of those eyes.

**Lilly**  
They are together for a summer, and in that summer they buy ice cream and go barefoot, staying up late to watch stars and sharing secrets in between kisses. They take long bus rides - neither being yet old enough to drive - to beaches and to bays and they play in the waves and kiss on the sand and the relationship is hot and bright and sparkling, like the season itself. She has long sun-kissed hair and brilliant blue eyes and he loves her and opens his heart to her.

One day he will find her with another boy, a prelude of sorts to the failed marriage that will come much later, and she will explain that it had been nothing but a summer fling and that he had never really mattered so much to her at all. He has loved too much and too quickly, rewarded with heartbreak for his passion, and this is the first but not the last time that this will be true.

**Rebecca**  
She is a painter, and he begins to see the world as she sees it, in tones and in swirls of colour and shade. She is more beautiful than anything he has ever seen, and they are two years of a picture-perfect high school romance. They will walk down hallways hand in hand, study under the shade of trees on the grounds, sneak kisses in between class. Their grades do not suffer. They are flawless students in a flawless relationship. This love is perfect, the colours of golden sunshine and green grass and the soft pink of rose petals and lips. He cannot see an end to it. On weekends, they go out to movies. They go for long walks hand in hand. She listens to their band rehersals, and claps at the end of every set. She is a daughter to his father, and he, a son to hers. He is charming to her mother, and she is kind to his. Every brush stroke is in place, and perfectly.

The purest moments spent with Rebecca are those that cannot be painted, cannot be captured. They have tried, used many bottles of paint to try and duplicate the exact shade of blue-indigo of the sky around ten-thirty, when they will crawl out his bedroom window to the flat roof of his house and watch the stars. But they have found it impossible. She was not fazed. Some things can not be painted. Some things must simply be lived. When that car crash took her from him, they had been together two years.

**Emily**  
Her eyes are very green, and they are the first colour he notices in a long time. He is in his last year of high school now. He has seen by now the pain that follows when you wear your heart on your sleeve. His own is guarded, protected. She does not try and change this. She is gentle and kind to him. Greg, once ever popular, has closed himself off from his old mates. The number of friends he has dwindles. He does not care. But Emily - they are friends. More than that is too much for him, and she understands this.

He will wonder sometimes what happened to her. He remembers eight times in which he wished to say three words, and eight times in which he did not. At graduation, they part ways for good. He will never have thanked her for what she did for him. Nor will he have been brave enough to tell her that he loved her.

**Catherine**  
It is his second year at Oxford, and she proves wrong the general consensus on campus that he, who avoids women so frequently, is quite obviously gay. He is still afraid. But she will heal him, build him up, and he will never suspect that one day those delicate hands will tear him back down. She is tall, but not quite his height. He remembers still how she would rise up on tiptoes to kiss him. She has brown-blonde hair and stunning blue eyes. He has almost forgotten what it means to be in love. She will remind him. One day they will break up. Another day, later, they will reconcile. The wedding is in autumn, the honeymoon over winter. She rises on tiptoe to kiss him at the altar. They are together then for over twenty years, and for all of that time, and even some after, he will love her unconditionally. It is a journey, and they travel far together, hand in hand. She will make him whole. She is his everything, and he hers.

One day everything will not be enough.

**Molly**  
When he thinks of Molly, he thinks of small delicate things, rosebuds and snowflakes and the calm of early morning. She is broken, like him. His heart is too fragile to risk it. She will never look at him beside Sherlock, and maybe this is a good thing.


End file.
